A Drop of Night(42)

“But we believed them,” I say as I pass him.

We barely even questioned anything until it was too late. We saw their snazzy names, looked up their snazzy websites. It was all just paper and Internet stuff, stuff that’s so easy to fake and lie about.

Selective Perception n.—The tendency to disregard or more quickly forget stimuli that causes emotional discomfort or contradicts prior beliefs.

Aka, if you don’t want to see it you won’t.

I can’t even fathom myself from twenty-four hours ago. I was so busy following my rotten little heart Disney princess–style, and look where it got me.

I slow down, because the others are still milling around the weapons. I wish they’d hurry up. “If we get out of here, these people are done for,” Lilly’s saying. “Can you imagine the court cases? I mean, even if we don’t get out, something’s going to happen. Our parents will go to the cops.”

Something about Lilly’s words gives me a sinking feeling. She’s still banking on her parents, still thinks they might rescue us, like a little kid jumping blindly, sure she’s going to be caught. And it’s not just because I’m bitter and my parents don’t have a clue where I am, and if they knew they would probably be planning a celebratory lobster brunch right now. Down here, in this huge, fake, beautiful alternate universe, words like “‘cops”‘ and “‘court cases”‘ sound ridiculous. The Sapanis flew us on a private jet out of JFK. They marched us over international borders without us ever showing our passports. I doubt they care at all about cops and court cases.

I’m passing more modern weapons now. Mortars and shells morph into high-tech warheads, night-vision helmets, body armor. Body armor like the trackers wore. Sleek and angular. A helmet stands on a display arm like a severed head.

I focus on the pictures on the walls. At least they’re gorgeous. The one nearest me shows a woodland clearing full of people having a country lunch. The sky is almost completely blocked out by leaves, but the light’s finding a way through anyway, dappling everything in mottled gold. The people in the painting are draped artfully over a blanket, plucking things from a woven basket. They’re dressed in late eighteenth-century costumes, obviously wealthy, but with little hints of carefully tailored farmer chic. A straw hat here. A striped apron there. It looks like a family. A really beautiful, happy family.

I take a step toward it and I feel something like nostalgia, which is strange because God knows I’ve never been on a picnic like that. I catch details: the wine, glossy red inside crystal goblets. A spot of sunlight on a silver fork, almost hidden inside a fold in the blanket. The smiling lips of the woman holding the cake. There’s a glow to her, like the painter wanted to make her look even more beautiful than she already was––

Her teeth are bloody red, her smile stained.

I blink.

No. Her teeth are normal. White and small and delicate, like chips of bone.

I tear myself away from the painting, keep going. What is wrong with you, Ooky? The others are ahead of me now. I hurry to catch up. They’ve congregated around a painting of a rabbit. We should be moving, running, not hanging around art browsing. I reach them. Jules is right in front of the painting, staring up.

“Are you sure?” Lilly’s saying, incredulous. “It could be a copy.”

“It’s not a copy; look at the brushstrokes,” Jules says, doing some sort of indignant, expressive hand gestures up at the canvass. “You can’t copy that kind of motion. I know this one. I know it!”

Okay, Jules, calm down. I look up at the painting. It’s not even that interesting. Definitely doesn’t grab me and shake my brain around like the meadow scene did. The rabbit is standing against a brown background, draped silk, I think. Its back is to the viewer, its head turned over its shoulder. It’s looking at me.

Okay, maybe it’s a little bit interesting. Something about the rabbit’s gaze is heartbreaking, a sort of reproach in its almond eyes, maybe inevitability, like the rabbit is going to a horrible fate and it’s partially my fault.

“What is it?” I ask.

“It’s lost is what it is.” He looks over his shoulder at us, eyes wide. “Or it should be. It’s by Kanachev. The Russian master? They only have black-and-white photographs of it, and his pictures were stolen during the siege of Leningrad. He disappeared during World War II, died in a concentration camp or something. This was his masterpiece.”

“So what’s it doing here?” Lilly says.

Exactly. What is it doing here? I don’t even want to know. I don’t want any more revelations and I don’t want to know who these people are, because every time we get another inkling, they get more nightmarishly awful. I start walking toward the doors at the end of the gallery, fast.

“Oh wow,” Lilly whispers behind me. “Anouk, wait. Look.”

I glance back. She’s pointing up at another painting, a small gilt frame high on the wall. I stop dead in my tracks.

The painting is of a girl. She’s wearing a gray silk gown with a blue sash, and she’s standing, one arm resting on a marble bust. Her fingers are curled around a key and a sprig of something, a daisy maybe. A gauzy shawl hangs from her bare shoulders. Her hair is dark. Her eyes are piercing blue. Her face is sharp, angry.

It’s a portrait of me.